She is a Mage
by Princess Fawna
Summary: She is a mage and he is a templar, thus they cannot love one another, yet somehow, despite everything, they do. Cullen/Amell


A/N: This is a little thing that I thought up, and I sat down for hours in order to write it in one sitting. It's just a vague little piece of Cullen/Amell fluff (at least, I consider it fluff).

Please review and tell me what you think!

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She is a Mage

She is a mage, thus she is a monster. She is a woman, thus is forbidden. She is kind, thus he is unable to resist. She is a blood mage, thus she is a demon.

She is like winter, beautiful to look at while sitting safe inside, but you would not wish to be in the storm. She is the storm when she finds enemies and she attacks them relentlessly until they fall.

She is a two sided coin. One side is warm and wonderful, helping anyone who needs it. The other side is cold and unforgiving; if you get on its bad side you will find yourself dead.

She is a forbidden fruit, so he watches from afar, dreaming to come closer. He has a vile, unholy infatuation with her, one that the Maker should smite him for having. The only reason that he still stands is because the Maker has turned His gaze from the world, never to look upon His people again. She is his Andraste, pretty with an alluring voice that sings like a siren's song.

He watches all mages, waiting for them to turn, ready to slay them. Yet, he watches her and he feels more a guardian than a killer.

She can cast lightning from her fingertips, fire from her breath, and ice from her eyes, yet he does not fear her. Because with those same hands that cast destruction, she can also heal. She can heal from a small cut to a severed leg. It seems as if she could even raise someone from death, and it makes his fear of the unholy taint of magic nonexistent. She travels the Fade whilst awake, but that is nothing to fear, for he travels it in his dreams.

She is pretty, but always deadly, one cannot forget what she is, what she can do. But she makes it so _easy_ to do exactly that. With her kind smiles, bouncy skip, hair tied in three pigtails it is so easy to forget.

Then she gets driven out of her gilded prison, and she is happy to leave her cage. But she leaves him, staring at her back in sadness. She will never return. Mages don't return to the Tower, not unless they are corpses. And the corpses usually are not brought back. No one bothers. Her blood becomes Tainted with the essence of those evil creatures, and he fears that she had died. Not that her death would matter anyway, he would never see her smile again anyway.

Then she does the impossible. She comes back. He unwittingly poured out his feelings about her, thinking that she was another demon there to taunt him with what he cannot have. He can't believe that she is real at first, for he can still smell the blood of his recently-slain friends on the air and why, _why, _would a goddess like her be in this hell? She is real, though, and he instantly regrets his words. He is weak, but he knows one thing for sure, all the other mages must die. They are evil, abominations and blood mages in disguise, and he knows that she is the only mage that he can afford to trust.

He begs her to kill all the mages, because they _must_ die for the death of his friends, but she just looks at him and says emotionlessly that she would not. He blinked; it was unfathomable, inconceivable, that she would refuse to do such a vital act.

But refuse it she did, and when he saw the cuts on her wrists, his fears are answered. Oh, Maker, she is one of them! A blood mage! An abomination! How could his beautiful mage become such a thing? She sees his gaze upon the cuts, and she tugs her sleeves down, but it was too late, he had seen them clearly. He glared at her with all the hate he could muster. "Sorry," she had whispered, and then she was gone.

Gone, leaving him rotting in his prison, and even though the demon was gone, he still suffered. For now, he had thoughts about her to plague his mind, thoughts about her evil, about how all mages were evil. They murdered his friends, destroyed his home. They took his love and twisted it in their foul hands, into a tool that they could hope to use. He had resisted, he had prevailed where all his friends died. But it left him a husk, broken and empty. And his blood mage had taken all that was left of his soul.

He heard screams from the Harrowing Chamber. He had been hearing screams coming from there for the last two days, but these screams were coupled with the harsh sounds of swords as they clashed. Swords hadn't been heard from that place since all the templars died. Save him, of course. Then, both the screams and the clanging stopped, and he feared. Feared for his blood mage, feared for the Tower, feared that the blood mages and abominations would soon be walking down those stairs to finish him off. The silence stretched on and on and he almost screamed, if only to cause some sort of sound.

Then, he sensed a shift of magic, the buzzing of his prison began to waver and suddenly, his cage cracked like glass before shattering and disappearing without a sound. He stood slowly, almost unable to believe it, she had prevailed! He heard steps coming down from the Harrowing Chamber and he turned and watched. There she was, helping First Enchanter Irving down the stairs. Behind her there were a few more mages coming down, her companions aiding them. In her other hand she held a bloody and ripped up piece of paper, the Litany. One of the blood mages using the Litany…that was ridiculously ironic.

Her sleeves were pulled up completely, and he could see that her cuts covered both of her entire arms; they simply started at the wrists. He winced when he saw that some of them were fresh. Blood mage…there was no denying it…but there was nothing he could do now about it either. She saw him and quickly looked away, unable to face him. She knew very well what she was, so why did she become it in the first place?

Sure, she could not be slain with the reasoning that she was a maleficar since she was a Grey Warden, not a mage, but she looked as if she regretted it. Maybe she simply became one because she need the power—no, no one needs power so much that they have to resort to the very means that their enemies use, no matter how desperate the task set before them is. He is being hopeful that she doesn't want to be such a monster, but he cannot fill himself with false dreams anymore.

All mages were evil, they were just a shell of a living thing with a demon writhing inside, just waiting for the chance to break out. No longer would he dare love such a beast. All mages were monsters, and he had to remember that.

He begs Knight-Commander Greagoir to kill all the mages, but Greagoir is foolish and says that the mages are safe now, no longer would they transform for now. How could the Knight-Commander be so stupid?! The mages would only use his denial to further their cause and they would corrupt everything! She stood there, a broken smile upon her face as she remained for a bit. She got her promise of help for the war, and then she was off, leaving the mages and templars that were left to pick up the pieces of the Tower. She was gone again, and mages never returned to the Tower, even though she had.

He tries to not look at mages as murderers as they clean the Tower of blood and bodies, but he cannot. They killed his friends, and it is only because of them that he has to carry the broken corpses of his friends to the boat to be rowed across the river, to be burned on the other side. He almost snarled when a templar asked if they could just dump the bodies in the lake, his friends deserved more than to be food for the scum in the river. He couldn't talk for the mages though; perhaps they deserved such a fate.

He takes up one of his old posts when his part of the work is done, in the library. He remembered seeing her there, milling around the books, always picking one too many in her arms and then falling rather ungracefully onto the floor. Then, he would stand above her, arms crossed as he told her how silly she was, you should only take as many as you can carry. Then he would offer his hand to her and she would accept it, her books forgotten on the floor.

Memories haunted him as he walked through the remnants of his home, past the evil shadows and ravaged corpses, ignoring the mages as best as he could. His mind, once a happy place that was only tinged with sadness, became a grey wall of anger, desperation, sadness, regret, and all those thoughts and visions that had been in his mind when the demon had trapped him.

It felt like years, but in reality was only months, she returned. Why would she keep doing that? There was nothing for her here. The Blight had been halted and she entered the Circle again, and she was beaming, happy to be back. Her happiness faded at the sight of him though, his quiet glare ruining any hope that she harbored of a happy homecoming. She frowned and looked down at the floor, her skip changed into a walk instantly.

She walked to one of the shelves of the library. He glared from across the room, reminding himself that she was not the one whom he loved. She was a mage, thus a monster and it was in his best interests to remember this fact.

Her sleeves slid down her arm as she reached up, reminding him of her cuts and blood magic, and she simply took a single book. She walked slowly to a reading chair, her head down. She sat, opening the single tome and read for the next hour. The library remained mostly empty; they were the only two entities inside it.

They were complete opposites, she, a mage, who sat reading, whilst he, a templar, stood guarding the library from her if she turned into an abomination.

The only sound was that of pages turning, and he noticed that they turned much slower than they used to. Finally, her eyes shot up, and she snarled at him, asking him what his problem was. He replied, keeping emotion out of his voice, that she was a blood mage, and _how_ she could get away with being such a thing was surely against the Maker.

She hissed that she only became a blood mage because she needed the power; she had an entire world to save! She said that she did it for the greater good, to save the world that she loved. He asked her what she could love in such a world, for what was left after the Tower died? Her response was instant, angry, "You."

Once said, it could not be taken back. Her eyes were wide, for she had not meant to say this, while he just stared, his eyes a mask. Behind his calm face, his mind was racing, oh _why_ did she have to taunt him like this? Weren't the tests and taunts over, gone with the demon? It was cruel to play with him like this, after he had suffered so much at the hands of mages and demons! Yet…the implications behind those words were something that he had longed to hear for so long, regardless that it was forbidden to him. He had taken vows, but they meant little to him now. Compared to her, a few vows were nothing. The Maker had turned His gaze from the world, so who was there to watch him sin? This feeling could not be a sin anyway, it was too good, too pure, and despite all his attempts to end it, it prevailed.

He was pulled out of his thoughts when he noticed that she was still staring at him, frightened of what his reaction would be. He almost laughed; she really had no idea, even when he had basically confessed when he thought that she was nothing more than a vision sent to tempt him by a demon. He suddenly smiled at her, an expression which his face had not held since his friends were slaughtered. She blinked, surprised at his smile and she whispered that she was almost as bad as he was, telling her feelings when she had not intended to. He agreed, his grin never faltering.

The tension between them just disintegrated and became nonexistent, and they became what they used to be.

He started to stutter once again, if only occasionally, and his hatred for mages dissipated.

She commenced her skipping, and her rear became reacquainted with the floor as she took too many books into her arms once again.

The smell of blood left the Tower and soon the furniture was replaced. The halls lost their strange emptiness as more people came to the Tower, mages and templars both. Rooms became filled with laughter, comfortable silence, and the yelling of teachers at their students.

Life was returning to normal, healing all those wounds, both mental and physical, that the survivors had acquired. Those wounds became scars, still present, but no longer creating constant pain. No one would forget those that sacrificed themselves to save the Tower, and no one would forget the evil that took the Tower in the first place.

Only a single blood mage was housed underneath the Tower's roof now, and she vowed never to use blood magic again. Her scars remained, symbols of what she had to do in order to save the world for those she loved. He looked at those and didn't think of the evil blood magic that she wielded, but instead he thought of her sacrifice for _him,_ and him alone.

She smiled at him the next day and her lips formed the words, "Hello, Cullen." Everything seemed to lighten after that, as she skipped away down the hall, her pigtails bouncing with her. He himself only barely whispered in return, "Hello, Tasha," but she had heard him all the same.

She is a mage, thus she holds a powerful thing in her hands, a power which can both heal and harm. She is a woman, thus she has a strong will and the ability to choose for herself. She is kind, thus he can believe her wish to do good in the world. She is a blood mage, thus she was supposed to be an evil, power hungry abomination, but she was simply a savior to not only him, but the entire world.

She is a mage and he is a templar, thus they cannot love one another, yet somehow, despite everything, they do.


End file.
